


Papercuts

by magdalyna



Series: Cultverse [6]
Category: Bandom
Genre: Cults, Dubious Consent, Dubious Morality, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-03
Updated: 2013-11-03
Packaged: 2017-12-31 08:56:44
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,306
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1029774
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/magdalyna/pseuds/magdalyna
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Travis contemplates belief.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Papercuts

**Author's Note:**

> Beginning paragraph taken from lj user joker-and-thiefs Seasons Change But People Don't

Prelude/The Hermit

Spencer watches him walk away. He knows there is more to Spencer Smith than drums and Autumn, knows there’s more to Gym Class Heroes than meets the eye, knows Travis plays a bigger part in the Message than he lets on.

 

A Side/The Fool

Travis McCoy may be the joker, but he’s nobody’s fool.

He grew up listening to Metallica and The Jackson 5. The Smiths and Aretha Franklin. Black Sabbath and Run DMC. He never fit in because of this. He was always teased because his parents were black and white. The other kids never knew what to do with him. They always asked what he was. 

He is grateful for the bullying because it helped him develop his sound, his message. It gave him a reason to be better than them, to want more than them. 

He was always on a quest for purpose. 

He met Matt in his high school gym class and everything clicked. 

They became fast friends, quickly living in each other’s pockets, one never far apart from the other. Matt was enraptured by his early message, one that he helped Travis refine to an art form of thought. Matt was his first and most loyal disciple. 

Eric and Sashi came later, although they were just as dedicated. 

Milo and Ryan just weren’t right for the group, wanted different things from life than Travis and Matt. They didn’t _get_ that there could be a message, like Matt. They didn’t get the message Travis had either, though not for lack of trying. Travis let them run away to school, let them leave. They both wouldn’t tell the world any interesting secrets, things better not said. Travis had made sure of that. 

It was the hand of Fate (Sound-his only deity) that their web designer gave a copy of Papercut Chronicles to Pete Wentz. Even more so that Pete liked what he heard and signed them to his brand new label. 

 

Intermission/The Tower

Despite any yearnings he might have had, Travis hadn’t actually had sex with other guys before he met Pete Wentz.

He didn’t get saved in the back of an unpainted van, as he’s sure many of Pete’s early followers must have. 

No, it was all class for him- a shady motel room in the middle of nowhere. 

Pete saved him, changed his eyes easily. _(Save their lives/change their eyes, Pete hummed, thrusting into him again)_

Travis even liked it, liked the way Pete worked him over till there was something neither of them recognized in himself. Until he was new and different. 

He was better with this change, but he still had his own message. He’s thankful that stayed the same. 

Gabe was more intense. Gabe was always more intense. 

Gabe whispered things in smoky dead serpentine languages that curled up in his veins, made the blood thump a little harder through his heart. 

Gabe made him _want_ to take the Cobra, made him want everything Gabe had to offer in a way Pete couldn’t with his parlor trick of a message. 

He really was a different person, on the inside, where it counted, when Gabe was done with him. 

It was both of them changing him that made Travis realize that his own message was worth it, that he could do what they had done. He could build an empire. 

Whenever he changed a scene kid in lieu of Pete or Gabe, he put a little of his own message in with the mix, smirking inside himself. He’ll bid his time. 

 

B Side/The Hanged Man

Spencer has a rare gleam of awareness that Travis doesn’t see much of these days. 

The boy doesn’t have a message of his own _(oh but what if he did?, says the voice in his head that sounds like PeteGabeWilliam)_ but he’s managed to keep a level head in Pete’s traveling circus of Belief and Illusions, as Travis is in his head calling the hodgepodge that is DecayDance and Clandestine and the million other pies Pete has his fingers in. His hooks in the form of scene kids in the pit, in the streets, all spinning until there’s _more_ of them. He won’t dare say it out loud. 

So the boy is _aware_ but lacks focus. Travis decides to toke up with him, see if there’s something more to Spencer Smith the Fifth than drumming. Spencer makes him proud, the awareness focused inward is what he was looking for, is the first step, but Travis doesn’t know where exactly he’s taking them. 

But old demons don’t stay dead, even when you’ve changed so much you can’t recognize the face in the mirror. 

Travis fits in music, in sound and it fits in him, in his soul. He belongs with and feels at home with his label mates and it’s the only place he ever felt at home. 

He doesn’t feel like he sacrificed anything important until he went back to his parent’s house on a touring break and felt like a stranger. In the house where he studied, played, skinned his knees and fell out of a tree when he was 9. 

He realizes all too late that he didn’t give anything up he already had but what he could have had. He gave up any chance of being normal when he walked into that motel room with Pete. _(The voice in his head is snide at this: He was never normal, he never fit in, and he’s being a pussy now that he finally fits in somewhere?)_

He realizes all too late how much he wants to be normal. How much he wants to be one or the other, that he can say for certain ‘I’m ______’. How much he wanted to fit in as a child. 

The realization roils and turns his stomach because he thought he was _better_ than that. Music, the way sounds fit together, saved him from that 9 to 5 life, from needing to fit in. 

William sees him after Travis goes back on tour, sees how rattled he is. 

William can be perceptive when he wants to be. Or rather, he shows he can be perceptive when he wants to be. It’s something that annoys Travis, but he gets it. Will is in Pete and Gabe’s spotlight more often, needs to be as opaque as possible with his true thoughts. 

Over drinks on Travis’s tour bus, because that’s a favored pastime, Will slowly gets the story from him, sees the ugly, skittering, id part of him that still wants to be mundane. 

“Will this be a problem?” he asks smoothly-sharply. Concern laced with an edge. 

Travis isn’t sure. 

“No. I’ll get my head on right.” He says, placates, hopes Will believes him. 

Will looks at him over the glass, swathes of light catching on it, almost blinding him. 

“You should get on that before Pete or Gabe notice. They’ll want make life unpleasant if you haven’t.” he states the obvious with quirked lips. Travis knows he isn’t joking. 

Something changes on Will’s face and then he’s grimacing, glaring at him. 

“Don’t you know that you _belong_ with us? That you fit in with us? That whatever happened to you as a scared biracial little 8 year old doesn’t matter? That you’re special and don’t _need_ to be normal?” Will almost is shouting now, slurring slightly but still coherent. 

Will angrily puts on his jacket and storms off the bus, growling “Don’t you get it?” as he leaves.

Travis thinks that after all this time he might. Because he doesn’t need to fit in, but wants to. It’s a want he can abandon now. He finally gets it. 

Travis McCoy may be the joker, but he’s nobody’s fool.

He’s going to build his own empire, because his message is worth it.


End file.
